Interview: Measuring progress in Agile Programs
with Johanna Rothman

The classical way to measure and plan an Agile team's capacity is to use velocity, i.e. the number of story points the team delivers in one iteration. However, velocity is not useful when teams want to explain their status — velocity is unique to a team, and it’s too easy for a team (or management) to game the measure.

To accurately report and communicate project status, teams must turn to other tools: the product backlog burnup chart, the project feature chart, and possibly even cumulative flow.

To shed more light on this tricky topic, we've invited Johanna Rothman for a 45 minute discussion around the most common questions people ask. Johanna is among the few people who witnessed firsthand the emergence of Agile applied to programs, and pioneered the approach with a variety of customers.

You want measurements that mean something useful at the program level. Consider how you might explain to anyone about what the program has completed and what remains not yet done.
As always, the best measurement is working product. However, that is not the only measurement you can take that means something at the program level.